


Toothed Morality (Send Me Flowers)

by rightsidethru



Category: Japanese Mythology, Norse Religion & Lore, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 2019 Steter Reverse Bang, Alive Hale pack, Alpha Peter Hale, Alpha Stiles Stilinski, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Trauma, Creature Stiles Stilinski, Frontotemporal Dementia, I hope you all are ready for the Nogitsune because I love this stupid fox., Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Morally Ambiguous Stiles Stilinski, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Past Kate Argent/Derek Hale, Steter - Freeform, Steter Reverse Bang, Steter Reverse Bang 2019, Underage (though Stiles is 16-ish and things don't get too hot and heavy), Were-Creatures, one-sided Kate Argent/Stiles Stilinski, pretty much Kate Argent deserves her own warning tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-04-11 14:56:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19112008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rightsidethru/pseuds/rightsidethru
Summary: “The world is a dark place,moje kochanie; it is one filled with monsters, always ready to gobble you whole. Be wary of the promises they give: seal every vow with blood and bone andName. A True Name, one that will bind them to their word.”“But how will I know that they’re telling the truth, Matka? Couldn’t they lie…?”“You’ll know,mały płomień.”





	Toothed Morality (Send Me Flowers)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RayShippouUchiha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RayShippouUchiha/gifts), [SpiritOfFox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpiritOfFox/gifts).



> Hello, everyone, and welcome to my entry for the 2019 Steter Reverse Bang! :)
> 
> I just wanted to start things off by mentioning that I have the most _amazing_ artist; SpiritofFox (who can also be found as [nutterfox](http://nutterfox.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr!) is incredibly talented and, no lie, I fell in immediate love with the artwork that I got paired with and had originally requested. Needless to say, this story wouldn't have come to be without her artwork and, because of that, I wanted to dedicate it to her. :)  
> Additionally, if you wanted to go to the direct post with her artwork, please do so [HERE](https://nutterfox.tumblr.com/post/185628796328/art-submission-masterpost-for-toothed-morality).
> 
> As a secondary dedication, I wanted to give this over to Rayshippouuchiha as a veeeeeery belated birthday present. This past spring Really, Really Sucked for multiple reasons and I had originally intended on your birthday present being a WinterIron piece, so... uh, please accept this instead? XD;;
> 
> Also, many thanks to **lavenderlotion** for their wonderful mod work. If they hadn't hosted this event, we wouldn't have gotten the opportunity to enjoy so many stories and wonderful pieces of art. So thank you! :)
> 
> With that done:
> 
> I hope that you all enjoy the story and please leave a kudos/comment! <3

**Toothed Morality (Send Me Flowers)**

*

 _To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world._  
**The Little Prince** by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

***

“The world is a dark place, _moje kochanie_ ; it is one filled with monsters, always ready to gobble you whole. Be wary of the promises they give: seal every vow with blood and bone and **_Name_**. A True Name, one that will bind them to their word.”

“But how will I know that they’re telling the truth, Matka? Couldn’t they lie…?”

“You’ll know, _mały płomień_.”

*

Stiles’ breaths came panting, quick gasps that fanned through the early evening air—wreathing his head in quicksilver and smoke before dissipating, fading away into less than nothing. The boy’s feet pounded along one of the Preserve’s many game trails, leading him deeper and deeper into the forest: minutes ago, he’d left the familiar pathways behind and dove headfirst into the wilder, more unexplored portions of the wooded area.

The full moon was high above, fat and heavy in the sky—and the honey-eyed boy had lived long enough in Beacon Hills to _know_ that you didn’t head into the Preserve during the full moon—but the air was thick in his home, cottony and filling each room with a miasma that dragged everything down and smothered his chest each time he tried to inhale; thick and dark and weighty enough that, if Stiles wasn’t careful, it’d drag him down to _drown_.

So the boy had left, slipped through his bedroom window, and _ran_ : ran away from his dad, buried too deeply in his grief that he didn’t notice that his son was missing from his bed; ran away from the house that was no longer a home, a place that echoed with the negative echoes that buried themselves deeper and deeper within the foundation; ran away from his Matka, the mother who was no longer a _mother_ , who wore her face but had _none_ of her personality, her spirit, her _love_ remaining (a stranger who screamed at him now, called him monster and abomination and came at him with fingers curled into claws, who terrified him and left him feeling empty and bitter and filled with hate because he did not want this stranger; he wanted his _mother_ ).

Stiles’ feet continued to pound along the packed dirt of the faint trail he was stumbling along, mostly locked in his own dark, spiraling thoughts and barely paying attention to the pathway that was only faintly illuminated by the moonlight that managed to break through the overreaching branches in patches: brief islands of light to stand against the darkness of the night. But Stiles managed to make his way deeper into the Preserve, only tripping and falling occasionally—still so very focused on getting _away_ and _alone_ and to some concept of _safe_ , letting the desire push him forward and forward and forward still—

Until the seven year-old broke through the forest’s edge, moonlight dazzlingly bright enough to haze Stiles’ vision; footing lost during the disorientation, the boy fell to his knees and skinned one on a hidden rock, crying out softly in the velvety hush that had fallen over the world hours before (still relatively quiet, however, even in his sudden pain: still remembering the danger that came with venturing into the Preserve at night and on a full moon).

_…a… child…?_

Stiles stilled completely at the whisper that came to him on the breath of the wind, fingers curling tightly over the fabric of his jean shorts: waiting to see what he had found (or what had found him).

_…child…_

_…pain. Chaos. **Strife.** Grief…_

Knowing that it was unwise to do so—but curiosity still his strongest vice, and one that Stiles rarely bothered to fix—the dark-eyed boy’s attention caught on the gargantuan tree stump in the middle of the clearing, something within himself being drawn _closer_ even as he carefully pushed himself upright, dusting off dirt and debris, and made his way further into the open space.

_…child…_

_…can you hear me…_

_… **Spark** …_

“Who are you?” Stiles asked into the hush of the night, pausing for a moment before tacking on a secondary question (remembering lessons that perhaps others might think foolish for taking to heart, but the boy had always _known_ that tales contained a kernel of truth), “ _What_ are you?”

_…let me out…_

_…let me **in** …_

The whispers grew rougher, angrier and more desperate, and Stiles bent to wrap his fingers around the metal top of a glass container that had lured him in, like a moth to a flame, gleaming enticingly beneath the silvery hue of the full moon. Charcoal-tinted fog swirled within the confines of the jar, and the walls of the container were bitterly cold against the palms of Stiles’ hands.

For the briefest of moments, the space between one heartbeat and the next, the boy could have sworn that he saw a pair of silvery eyes looking out of the shadows at him.

 _Poczwara_ , Stiles thought as his thumb brushed against the rim of the container’s lid, tantalizingly close to unscrewing it completely off (tantalizingly close to releasing the monster within). _Treasure. Matka was right._

_**…let me in, child…** _

“I want a promise—a _vow_ —first,” the human child answered in reply, trying to make his voice as stern, as firm, as he could. “That you’ll… That you’ll stay. Be a friend. Be _mine_. Promise it, and I’ll let you out.”

(Because with no mother and hardly a father, Stiles was so— _lonely_.)

_…promise…_

The stories, cautionary tales that Stiles had instead adopted as important life lessons, were what prompted the boy to then demand: “Seal it with your Name. Or it doesn’t count and I’ll leave you here. You have to use your _Name_.”

Silence settled over the clearing, and Stiles got the distinct impression that he had startled the monster—whatever it was; the moment dragged on, seconds stretching into infinity, and the child gave a shaky inhale while his stomach sank in bitter disappointment: and then the creature broke into surprised, pleased laughter.

_…such a… **smart** kit… sly… cunning. My name is— **Kuugeki**._

“I’m Mieczysław,” Stiles whispered in turn, and he curled his fingers tighter around the jar’s lid. “Mieczysław Loptr Stilinski.”

_… **not** … your Name, boy…_

He swallowed, lashes wet and clumping together with tears that he refused to allow to fall, and finally opened the glass container: “I’m Mischief… I’m _Mischief_.”

Stiles was swallowed whole by the shadows.

*

Eight years old and the Otherworld was more real to Stiles than the one he had been born to.

It was as easy as breathing, shifting from one reality to the next, stepping from shadow to shadow and watching a new home unfold before him: the foxes’ world, the Otherworld, was one that was painted in harsh contrasts—deepest onyx of woods that the boy knew now, travelling it all with sure feet, blood-red of a sun high above, always alight and tinting the world in battleground hues, the bleached white of ground and air that made everything so much _starker_ , so much _harsher_ , and Stiles made his way along well-worn paths while many-tailed foxes gamboled at his feet. A nine-tailed cloak covered him completely, offering its own type of blatant prophecy for all to see and interpret and _know_ , and Stiles ran over hill and yonder: happier here than he’d been in years.

(He didn’t want to leave. He _never_ wanted to leave.)

*

The Nogitsune was a warm weight against the small of Stiles’ back, tucked securely along the delicate S-curve of the child’s spine. Its steady breathing was calming in its own way, but not enough to coax the boy towards sleep; hypervigilant to every sound that creaked and sighed its way throughout the house, Stiles stiffened as the floorboards groaned just outside his bedroom door.

Shadows shifted along the door’s outline, light flickering before reappearing, and the honey-eyed boy curled his fingers tightly into the fabric of the pillow his cheek rested on.

Another creak.

Another groan.

The doorknob of his bedroom door turned—just a little bit.

The light disappeared from the hallway.

 _I wish Dad had left her in the hospital_ , Stiles thought to himself, never taking his gaze away from the door and the knob that still did not turn all of the way.

Waiting.

Waiting.

_Waiting._

(The doorknob never finished turning all of the way. But the floorboards continued to groan in warning all night long.)

The Nogitsune opened its eyes, gleaming quicksilver-bright in the muted confines of the child’s room.

*

In another life, in another story, Stiles would sit across from a woman named Marin Morrell—sometimes teacher, sometimes counselor, barely a druid, never trusted—and discuss in the most clinical way he knew how the body coped with drowning:

_“You know when you're drowning, you don't actually inhale until right before you black out. It's called voluntary apnea. It's like no matter how much you're freaking out, the instinct to not let any water in is so strong that you won't open your mouth until you feel like your head's exploding.”_

It was more of a backhanded statement on the desperation to survive, no matter what, the stubbornness in resisting until it was literally impossible to do otherwise—

But that conversation was one that would never happen now. Too many turns and choices had twisted what-might-have-been, possibilities sliding on by until then was no longer _now_ and would no longer be the future that Stiles had once been set towards.

 _Now_ :

The boy clawed at his mother’s arms, fighting desperately to get her to release him so that he could finally break the surface of the water to take the breath his lungs were _aching_ for. The bathtub wasn’t filled to the brim, but that was unnecessary; Stiles had read somewhere that a baby could drown in less than two inches of water and maybe he might need a bit more than that, but the tub was filled just enough to keep his head under—and Stiles _was drowning_ , needed air, and his mother was _killing him_ while she stared at him with a gaze so flat and cold that her eyes might as well have belonged to a corpse—

And this couldn’t be his mother, his Matka, Stiles wouldn’t accept that she was, wouldn’t reconcile that this dead-eyed woman was the Matka that told him stories when it was just the two of them in the house, spinning tales of magic and divinity and monsters that roamed the shadows of the forest—

\-- _he **hated** her, he did_—

Noah jerked her away from the bathtub, breaking the hold that she had on Stiles, and the boy surged upwards as water droplets splattered across the bathroom’s walls and floor, and he finally _breathed_.

*

The hospital was always muted at this time of night, witching hour making people numb and stupid, slow as exhaustion tugged at the senses and dulled thoughts to molasses. Nurses moved up and down the hallways on their rounds: rarely deviating away from the course, schedules set in something similar enough to stone that things rarely changed from night to night and shift to shift; it was as it was and Beacon Hills was a sleepy enough town that bad things ever really happened or went bump in the night.

Slowly, ever so slowly, the shadows deepened and darkened in Claudia Stilinski’s room: thick enough to be solid, a barrier that cut her room off from the rest of the hospital: sound became muffled, noises stretched thin and distant—extracted and set aside and _no one around to hear you scream_ because the space had shifted one step away from the reality of _now_. Claudia stirred in her bed as a heavy sense of foreboding settled at the pit of her stomach; something had changed from one moment to the next, and the lizard brain that all humans had despite thousands of years of evolution _screamed_ at her to wake up, **wake up right now**.

Claudia couldn’t move.

Her eyes snapped open, and Claudia met a silvery, predatory gaze: alien and Other, lacking any sort of humanity—lacking any sort of empathy—within those quicksilver eyes. The fox tilted its head to the side, gesture almost curious in nature, and then resettled more of its weight on the woman’s chest. Pressing down, pressing harder, pressing heavier. (There and gone again, she could see a flicker of dark satisfaction in that bright gaze, and Claudia realized with a distant sort of horror what was going to happen.)

Claudia couldn’t _breathe_.

“N-no…” she wheezed. “…help…”

The fox’s lips curled upwards, grin sharp enough to cut, and Claudia began to silently cry, tears soaking into the pillow her head was resting on. The fox did not stir, even when it became a struggle to take each and every one of her breaths: gaze implacable, the monster watched as her chest lowered—and did not rise again.

*

Stiles curled beneath the heavy weight of the Nogitsune’s nine tails and pressed his face against the downy softness of the fox’s fur, burrowing closer and hiding away within the shadowy confines of his bedroom; it was safe here—and comforting, too. There was a security in knowing that he had bound the monster to him years before and was, in a similar way, equally bound.

The boy did not have to ask what had happened at the hospital.

He fell asleep to the muffled sounds of the Sheriff’s sobbing.

(Perhaps a better son would have felt sad at his father’s loss, but…

Stiles had known for quite some time that he was not a _good_ son.)

His fingers curled possessively into the fur above the steady beating of the Nogitsune’s heart.

_Mine._

_**My monster.** _

*

He breathed in the scent of summer-warmed growing things, tilting his head up to the sky to soak in the feeling of the sun upon the curves of his pale cheeks. Bare toes wiggled deep into the loam beneath the soles of Stiles’ feet, and the boy took a moment to just— _breathe_.

“You’re trespassing. This is private property.”

Stiles blinked and opened whiskey-bright eyes, head tilting just enough to the side to meet the suspicious gaze of the Hale’s youngest son. The boy was several years older than Stiles himself, but Stiles had seen him picking up his sister, Cora Hale, from school several times before. Derek was gangly and awkward, scowl as intimidating as he could make it as he looked down at the trespasser to the Hale pack’s property: but Stiles had seen scarier things than Derek Hale, and the amber-eyed boy just lifted an eyebrow mockingly in answer.

“Your property line starts over there,” he replied readily enough, pointing towards a thick line of trees several feet off of the path Stiles currently found himself on. Soft laughter brushed against Stiles’ throat, and he felt the familiar touch of fur wreathing his head in a crown.

“…bye,” the younger boy eventually continued when Derek’s frown only deepened further, offput by the human child who wandered so comfortably through the woods that had belonged to his family for generations: every pack member had seen Stiles previous to this day, had known about his wandering for _years_ , had caught his scent throughout the entirety of the Preserve (both public and private land), but Derek had been the first willing to step forward to call the boy out on his travels. And the boy… just easily brushed him off with a too-knowing smile, had turned away and made his way deeper into the forest with an ease and familiarity that shouldn’t have been natural or present—but _was_.

Stiles’ footsteps were silent upon the moss.

*

The purple flower spun idly, this way and that, between Stiles’ index finger and thumb and pulp from the stem left his skin sticky and uncomfortable; his legs hung over the cliff’s edge, feet hanging several hundred feet above the ravine’s floor, and he swung them—to and fro, careless of the fall that awaited him should the boy make one wrong move—even as he stared out over the vast expanse of the Preserve that spread before him in a thick carpet of velvety green and always-reaching _life_.

He was a wild thing, abandoned by his father and left behind his mother: a creature more at home in the forests than surrounded by four walls and civilization.

Peter Hale tilted his head to one side as he looked the boy over, blue eyes going heavy-lidded as he considered the sight before him. Talia had finally decided to make her move; whether it came from a mother’s concern at the lack of supervision that Stiles currently acted under or the Alpha whose territory was being unintentionally invaded by someone who was blatantly _not_ Pack… the coin toss on the why or how or reason behind her intervention remained her own, but Peter had been sent out on this particular errand never-the-less.

“I would be a bit more wary of picking random flowers in the Preserve, if I were you,” he called out and began to trek his way up the hill that the boy was perched on.

Stiles paused in his absent humming, glancing over a slim shoulder to meet Peter’s gaze. For a moment, brief and there-and-gone-again, his shadow stretched out into a fox-like visage, nine tails waving mockingly around the child’s head. He smiled up at the older man, curve of his mouth sharp enough to cut someone—

And Peter paused, predatory instincts rising to the occasion as _curiosity_ stirred.

“It’s monkshood,” Stiles readily replied and finally opened his fingers to let the wind carry the flower away, petals tearing themselves to shreds as they flew away far and yonder. “Aconite. I always liked calling it _wolfsbane_ , though. What about you; what’s your favorite?”

The ‘wolf suddenly smiled back, teeth gleaming sharp and white and dangerous ( _better to eat you with, my dear_ ) beneath the full force of the noontime sun. “You must be Stiles.”

*

The storefront’s windows were huge, taking up the entirety of the sidewalk, allowing anyone who walked past to take a peek as to what lay within the store itself—coaxing passerby out of the summertime sun and into the cool recesses of the store, tempting them to shop and to buy and to indulge themselves a little in a purchase or two (or three).

Stiles paused, attention caught on his reflection: ten years old and coltish in body, features too sharp for his baby face—eyes bright enough to be supernatural in manner while his red hoodie added in a splash of color to the picture… but it was the image that stood at his shoulder that caught the boy’s attention, head tilting back to meet a familiar silvery gaze.

It was him, older and sharper still, with hair that brushed past his shoulders; clad in shadows and gold and red, clothing similar to photos Stiles had seen from the Heian court, the Nogitsune brushed a claw-tipped finger over the apple of the boy’s cheek even as it took the stylized fox’s mask from the side of its head to place over Stiles’ face: hiding him away from the world and painting his features in twilight and secrets.

Stiles reached up to trace his fingertips over the pointed tip of a vulpine snout, and the Nogitsune whispered against the delicate shell of his ear: “Come along, Mischief. Your father is waiting.”

*

The kitsune always trailed after Stiles as the boy wandered the forests of the Otherworld, yipping excitedly at his heels even as they made care not to step over the nine tails that flowed from the cloak that still covered him from throat to feet, ruff thick enough to brush along the underside of his jawline and the edges of his ears.

The foxes always rejoiced when Stiles made his way back through shade and shadow, stepping through his favorite doorway (always left wide open nowadays) to walk and run amongst the lot: thunder, celestial, wind, music, spirit, time, earth, river—twelve different types, all looking after him as if he was their own, and the thirteenth—his, Stiles’, the Nogitsune, _Void_ —following along through the underbrush. Never far from the child, always ready to shoo away the others when they got too rambunctious with the now-human boy, nine tails a safety net that Stiles could reach out and touch at any time.

Humanity was a distant concept as he ran with the foxes, mother and father far-off ideals when fur was warm beneath his fingertips and the chittering laugher of foxes filled his ears and while his magic _sang_ , beating along to his and the Nogitsune’s hearts, in tune and together and _bound_.

*

 _Some mischievous people [are] always there._  
_[They] last several thousand years, always there._  
_In [the] future, also._  
\- Dalai Lama

*

“Kuugeki…”

The Nogitsune paused as it was wandering deeper through the Preserve, taking a moment to glance over its furred shoulder to meet Stiles’ amber gaze. The boy’s brow furrowed as a sense of foreboding shifted and broke over him, and the pre-teen glanced away from the fox to stare out over the treeline around them.

“…don’t you feel that?”

The fox took a moment to tilt its head to the side, quicksilver eyes going half-lidded as it breathed deep: over and over again, tasting ash and wolfsbane and _death_ on the wind. It hummed thoughtfully, gaze considering even as it and the boy looked upwards to catch the first sight of heavy smoke rising up from the Hales’ side of the Preserve.

“Looks like hunters finally came calling for Beacon Hills’ wolves,” it mused aloud, tone dismissive until Stiles reached forward and flicked at a pointed ear in irritation. It snarled at the boy for the insult, though quieted almost immediately when Stiles buried his fingers in the thick fur at the base of its skull.

“Come on,” the fox-eyed boy murmured in answer and, as it had done so many times before—for _years_ —the Nogitsune followed, footprints falling in line with Stiles’ own until both blurred and faded away from sight and understanding: a monstrous combination of man and beast.

*

Stiles crouched in the shadow of a yew tree, hidden carefully amongst the branches with the ever-vigilant Nogitsune curled around his body—hiding him from even the sharpest of eyes (because who, truly, had the ability to look into the _void_ and see what it held?). Dusk had fallen ages ago, the forest around them dark as the stars brightened to existence, one by one—

And the Hale house was catching alight, windows beginning to burn cherry red and too-bright yellow as the flames rose higher and higher.

A woman stalked by Stiles’ hiding place and the boy curled himself into a tighter ball, moved deeper into the shadow and darkness that had been his home for years—veiling himself from her predatory gaze, illusions falling into place around both boy and fox as the huntress walked away from the blaze that she obviously had a hand in.

Her mouth was plush, made for smiles, but a cruel smirk curled her lips upwards and made her eyes cold.

 _She’s killing them. All of them_ , Stiles whispered to himself in horror, amber eyes wide as he fought the urge to be sick: and his focus never leaving the woman as she walked away from the Hale’s home—as she made her way deeper into the Preserve and away from the scene of the soon-to-be mass murder. Stiles watched her, watched satisfaction deepen the lines of her face, and told himself: _never forget this woman_.

-

No one was coming out of the house.

The hunter had left minutes ago and Stiles waited—waited still—for people to come tumbling out of the windows or doors, waited to hear relieved cries as family members reunited with one another, as they saved themselves from the inferno that was overtaking the house and setting nearby trees ablaze.

But no one left.

Cautiously, movements slow as he kept an eye out for the mysterious woman, Stiles crawled out from beneath the yew and closer—closer, closer—to the house that he’d passed countless of times before. The fire was burning steadily now, and the boy could only distantly hear the scream of sirens. The firetrucks were too far away, would arrive too late; everyone in the house would die.

His fingertips brushed against the sharp sting of soot, and Stiles inhaled sharply—“ _Ah!_ ”—as he brought his hand close to his body, cradling his injured limb against his chest in an instinctive gesture of self-preservation. At hearing the boy’s cry, however, the Nogitsune uncurled from their hiding spot to nose at the spot that had sent such a spark pulse of _something_ through Stiles’ fingertips.

It hummed thoughtfully, head tilting to the side before sliding a sly, moonlight-bright glance his child’s way. “Mountain ash,” it murmured and shifted to brush its length along the bowed line of Stiles’ back; almost immediately, the sting left the curve of Stiles’ fingers, and the whiskey-eyed boy uncurled his fingers from their protective fist. “They can’t leave because they’re trapped.”

“Can I…?”

“If you _must_ , Mischief.”

Tossing a sharp grin, all teeth and pain and _chaos_ for what was to come, the Nogitsune’s way, Stiles leaned in closer still to the boundary line that he was finally able to make out in the flickering light that was coming from the house; fingers curling and uncurling one last time, and the boy suddenly brushed his hand over the mountain ash line. It parted beneath his gesture, gaping wide as the Red Sea had when Moses parted it, and the air suddenly gave a telling _pop_ as pressure released, magic dissipating with no place to go.

The basement window shattered almost immediately after, and body after body scrambled out from the death trap that the house had become—escaping to freedom, to cool air, to _life_ and death denied—and Peter crawled his way across the dirt of his home’s driveway as shudders wracked his body and fear let go of the desperate clutch it had had around his heart ( _alive alive alive alive **alive**_ ). 

He glanced up, and in a moment of pure luck—Left Hand’s tendency of plucking at fate and coincidence—and Peter’s blue gaze caught on a stylized fox’s mask, painted in shades of black and red and gold. The figure stilled upon realizing that it was caught, amber meeting Peter’s blue behind the narrowed slits of the mask’s eyes, and a sole finger lifted to press against the mask’s snout.

_Shhhh…_

Shadows roiled behind the figure, stretching up and up and up—a fox’s outline outlined in void, curling over what must be a child’s slight body, with multiple tails stretching out in a possessive and protective gesture both—and swallowed the figure whole.

Peter shuddered and curled in on himself, drawing in as many deep, smoke-free breaths as possible.

**Alive.**

*

It became the talk of the town when the Hales just up and left only weeks later.

(Peter fought for them to stay.)

*

Beacon Hills had a different feel to the town once the Hales left. The streets felt emptier, the city less filled with life, with vitality; the Preserve felt… _wilder_ , harder to contain—less safe, certainly. Families stopped venturing into the forest for picnics; joggers no longer ran down established trails, instead opting to use the track at the local high school. The Preserve had become something untamable, a throwback to the primordial forests of old: the Big Bad Wolves had gone away, but something _darker_ had taken their place.

Stiles sat atop the cliff overlooking the city, watching as cars drove to and fro hundreds of feet below—humanity looking nothing less than a scurrying anthill mass, directionless in the grand scheme of things. With the Hale pack gone, even the mundanes could tell that _something_ was off in their town, and it showed in each and every gesture.

Humming to himself, the boy once more twirled a sprig of wolfsbane between his fingers and shifted to lean back against the warm bulk of the Nogitsune at his back.

“ _You're looking for help from God you say he couldn't be found / Looking up to the sky and searchin' beneath the ground / Like a King without his Crown…_ ” the boy sang quietly beneath his breath: still spinning the sprig of wolfsbane between his fingers, amber gaze distant and far away—centuries away—before once more letting the bloom slip from his fingers to be taken away by the wind.

The Nogitsune smiled to itself and leaned in closer to brush its jawline over the top of Stiles’ head, scentmarking in a possessive and familiar gesture both and imagining what a crown would look like perched upon the child’s head: a boy-king, set to rule this tiny but powerful kingdom.

Remembered Talia, the power that she exuded, the way that the other supernaturals would give way to her wants, her desires—an Alpha respected and feared; an Alpha no longer in residence.

 _The Queen is dead; long live the King_ , the Nogitsune thought to itself and tucked its head against the hollow of its boy’s throat, thin skin vulnerable against its shadow-kissed fur.

*

Rumors were a funny thing:

They spread like the wildfires that plagued California each summer and autumn, burning hot and as bright as the surface of the sun—and consuming everything in their path.

Rumors were a funny thing:

They oftentimes held a kernel of truth, well-buried and well-hidden from the casually searching eye, but still there and waiting to be found.

(Sometimes for a cost.)

*

The scent of smoke, thick enough to choke on, was something that often plagued Peter's dreams nowadays. Less a dream and more a memory edging into nightmare territory: he remembered the terror that had struck when he had attempted to break the basement's window, remembered the knowledge that this attack must have originated from a hunter--raged at the fact that a threat had been dogging the pack's heels for who-knows-how-long and that _he'd never even been aware of it_. He remembered the heat from the flames that licked at his feet and hands, remembered the sting of sweat as it beaded along his forehead before drip-drip-dripping ever so slowly into his eyes. He remembered the stink of his family's despair, the fear that shook along the pack bonds that tied them all together--

And he remembered the almost audible _pop!_ that had vibrated through the air when the mountain ash line had suddenly been broken.

Peter dreamed-- _remembered_ \--of finally being able to break through the window's glass, remembered the pain that the glass had caused as he crawled his way over the shattered shards, uncaring of the damage they'd wrought because he was actually still _alive_. Dreamed-- _remembered_ \--the way that the world had spun to a stop when Peter's killer-blue eyes had caught on the fox-child's tawny ones, hidden behind a stylized kitsune mask.

Something had _struck_ then, burrowing deep and latching tight onto his wolf: a stranger, someone--something-- _Other_ , like him; a guardian spirit, a protector, a creature with too-knowing eyes that met his own glacial blue one without flinching or looking away. A being that had remained hidden in the shadows, had gone away and through them, and Peter had _howled_ his fury, succumbed to the deeply buried rage, as Talia had carried the pack far, far away from Beacon Hills.

The dream-- _memory_ \--wouldn't release the claws it'd sunk in, though, and it was with the scent of soot cloying in his nose that Peter's lashes finally lifted and the 'wolf stared up at the ceiling of his bedroom window. It held no answers for him, hadn't for years, and for no discernible reason, Peter's breath hitched and stuttered as a soul-deep wave of _loneliness_ broke over him in a wave strong enough to drag him under.

Still:

Still--

Still and always, there was a _pull_ West.

(Peter covered his face with his hands and attempted to breathe through the smoke that wouldn't stop trying to smother him.)

*

There was a rumor of a guardian fox in Beacon Hills:

Proud and powerful, looking after the people that the Hales left behind—those mundane and those Other, rarely discriminating between the two (and punishing both equally when they chose to cross its path). There was a rumor of guardian fox in Beacon Hills, nine-tailed and over a thousand years old.

They called it _Void_.

(Noshiko Yukimura’s face bleached white upon hearing this particular story, filtered through a multitude of mouths and a multitude of ears—but there, _here_ , was the kernel of truth she hadn’t been expecting to find.

Her small family left New York City the next day, transferring out to the small Northern California town that she had left behind decades before—forgotten, like a bad memory. Until obligations and responsibilities came calling at her door once more.)

*

There were many things that Noshiko hadn’t expected of Beacon Hills: though the years had passed and she had become well-acquainted with how the world changed around her, year by year and decade by decade and century by century, there was still a sense of disconnect between _then_ and _now_. Many of the shops that she used to frequent were long gone, replaced with chain stores that had become bread and butter in each city across the United States. She didn’t expect Eichen House to still be standing. She didn’t expect the Nemeton to be nothing more than a half-rotted stump and the glass jar she had caught the Nogitsune in shattered upon the ground.

She didn’t expect to come home to her husband entertaining a thirteen year-old boy, eyes wide enough to show the whites of his eyes as he glanced up at her as she toed off her shoes at the front door.

“Ken…?” she murmured, brows furrowing in concern as she padded barefoot into the living room area.

“Hello, Noshiko,” the boy replied before Ken could utter a single word. He sipped delicately at the green tea the older man had prepared, amber gaze hooded as he met her own over the rim of the teacup. She froze at the room’s doorway, dread building swiftly within her chest as the shadows slowly began to solidify at the child’s feet—a child! a _boy_ , no older than her own Kira!—before giving way to the dark form of a kitsune that she was all too familiar with.

That still dogged her nightmares.

“Hello, _kin-betrayer_ ,” the Nogitsune chortled quietly, quicksilver gaze as bright as the full moon that had been promised for later on that night. Noshiko took a step backwards at the greeting—at the _promise_ waiting within its too-silver eyes—and the boy reached down to dig his long fingers into the thick ruff across the fox’s shoulders. Its gaze went half-lidded at the touch and it settled further at the child’s feet, nine tails curling ‘round both its torso and the boy’s sneakered feet.

-

Later that night, after both Ken and Kira retired to their beds, Noshiko lay curled up and sobbing in the grass outside their new suburban home. Huddled in a fetal position, all the once-kitsune could feel was _pain_ : pain of Rhys’ loss, still clinging to her too-old heart; pain of the loss of her nine tails, claimed for the betrayal of her celestial nature; pain of her power’s loss, _hoshi no tama_ stolen away this very night—the toll requested for staying here, the price demanded for what she had done to the Nogitsune decades before, the demand of the child-king who now ruled this place because he would accept nothing less in payment for the promise given to a _monster_ years ago.

-

Noshiko hadn’t expected the boy to go through with the debt owed, not truly. Hadn't expected the child to be so ruthless and bloodthirsty ( _should_ have known better, however, considering who-- _what_ \--was raising the kit). The demand came paired with a knowledge as to what would happen to her in turn, eventually (no longer a kitsune, no longer immortal, no longer with the power necessary to one day teach her daughter everything that Kira would need to know come ascension, no longer able to wield the nine tails that others of her kind looked upon with such envy)—the celestial kitsune had not expected the child to make such a demand and hold fast to the debt that was owed to the fox at his side. Had not expected his eyes to be so _hard_ , so coolly assessing; had not expected to see his fingers digging possessively through the field fox's ruff or the way that it had leaned against his hip in turn.

(But she had agreed because, despite the fact that it had been cruel to take Rhys’ body for its own, the Nogitsune had still done as requested of it: had fulfilled its end of the bargain, no matter the tricks against her, and she had repaid the job done by imprisoning it for years upon years upon years, time passing molasses-slow for the creature that was being driven insane by its captivity.)

The boy’s hand pressed over the swell of her breast, fox-bright gaze flaring with a power that she _recognized_ , hadn’t seen in years—and, when he pulled his fist away as agony raced along each and every one of Noshiko’s limbs, his fingers uncurled to show a glistening star-ball nestled in the curve of his palm.

 _Her_ star-ball.

A little piece of her soul, shining with a heavenly light.

The boy quirked a faint smile as he stared down at the softly shining hoshi no tama, fingers expertly spinning and twisting the compacted ball of power to and fro: the child's pianist's fingers manipulated the star-ball with a terrifying sort of ease and, as he flicked it idly towards Void, Noshiko couldn't stop a bitter thought from forming, lingering in the shadows of her mind, never intended to be spoken aloud: _This boy is more kitsune than Kira._

The Nogitsune caught the star-ball in its nine tails, hiding it away from view and never to be seen from again: and a thousand years old, already a god amongst the other foxes, the _kyuubi no kitsune_ grew that much stronger still, vulpine smile wide and hungry and spirit still bound to the child at its side.

(This time by choice: its _earth_ , family and friend and apprentice and child.)

*

The boy was sixteen, strong and beautiful and wild—

Perhaps not what his mother had originally planned for him, but _his own_ all the same.

*

_Tap. Tap tap tap._

_Tap tap tap taptaptaptap…_

Stiles paused the steady movements of his fingertips as his new History teacher walked into the classroom on the first day of Junior year. Boredom had been a regular companion of his for the past several years now—ever since he was able to finally get those who lived in his territory to fall in line—but, with a slight tilt of his head, the fox-eyed teen realized that things were once again going to change. No more routine: as the days and months and years had passed, Stiles had begun to anticipate certain events, a clairvoyant expectation that linked to the fact that _nothing changed_. Everything had stayed the same.

“Hello,” the woman practically _purred_ with a slow, teasing smile that bared too-white teeth at her new students. “My name is Katie Silverstein, and I’ll be your History teacher this year.”

The woman that Stiles remembered from the forest shifted to place her teaching supplies on the desk in front of the classroom’s blackboard, and the teen boy leaned forward to place his chin in the palm of his hand as he watched her. She glanced up, catching his gaze, and the teasing smile deepened, _darkened_ , into a too-knowing cat-got-the-canary smirk.

 _I’m going to enjoy destroying you_ , Stiles thought to himself as she winked at him before picking up a piece of chalk to begin writing their first assignment on the board. He felt the Nogitsune’s lips press briefly against a temple, the shadow of a sharp smile graze mole-kissed skin, and the screams of the Hale pack echoed in his memory.

( _History_ class, indeed.)

*

Foxfire danced between Stiles’ pale fingers, flickering in and out of existence with an ease that excited the watching kitsune: the boy was a natural at manipulating the temperamental element, though the comfort that Stiles had with it was telling for those who understood the lineage that he came from—

The _Spark_ of divinity that had called to the Nogitsune nearly a decade before.

“You’re getting even better at summoning it, Mischief,” the fox murmured in an almost idle manner as it brushed possessively along its boy’s side, scentmarking and claiming the child as its own before the other field foxes. They glanced away from the claiming, ears shifting to lay flat against the tops of their skulls, and Stiles quirked an amused smile the Nogitsune’s away.

“Summoning—just another form of theft, I suppose,” the boy teased absently in turn, snapping fingers to watch them come alight, fire tinged with shadow and shade: an influence from the Nogitsune that would never be shaken from the marrow of his bones. 

“Don’t get maudlin over your namesake, kit,” the Nogitsune chortled in reply, amusement sparking higher even as it settled at the strong arch of Stiles’ back, resting its chin over the boy’s shoulder to watch him manipulate the flame with an expert touch. It was… _intoxicating_ , watching the not-so-human child play with magic as easy as breathing.

Stiles hummed and—

_Fire._

*

The rumors had continued throughout the years, stories told that something powerful had moved into the Hale pack’s territory and had claimed it for its own; tall tales whispered in the dark of night in hidden corners of decrepit bars of how the creature defended its land and the people on it with tooth and claw, magic as untamable as the winds that crossed the earth; warnings, too, of how the hunters had begun to hear these rumors, as well, and had started to make their move—

Demands to stay away from Beacon Hills because the Argents were once more on the attack.

*

“It was our _home_ , Talia. Are you telling me that you’re planning on never going back?!” Peter snarled with teeth bared as his Alpha— _yet again_ —dismissed his concerns and arguments, ignoring the fact that this was what the Left Hand _did_ : saw the threats in the shadows, rallied the Alpha to action before the entirety of the pack could be put at risk. It was a reaction to his words that had become the standard for _years_ and the blue-eyed ‘wolf knew that Talia had long ago closed her ears to the advice that he offered on a silver platter.

It was infuriating, maddening, enough to make the younger man howl in rage at the fact that again and again and again he tried to counsel his sister and she would never take heed—

(Remembering the summit that Deucalion had held and the fact that Peter had told her _no_ , remembering trying to bring Derek’s behavior to her attention long before _That Night_ , wherein she had instead blamed Peter for the reason _why_ ; and here, now, him demanding that they needed to go back, that their ancestor’s land was no longer theirs, not even in tenuous legal name, that the Argent clan was most likely marshalling for yet another massacre—that blood and bone and _wolf_ demanded vengeance from the Hale pack, and there Talia stood, doing _nothing_.)

“ _This_ is our home, Peter,” Talia snapped back, temper finally close to breaking; she bared her teeth in turn at her brother, crimson gaze flashing to force Peter to submit, and continued, “It has been for years. We can’t go back. The danger is too great and with the effect that it’ll have on Derek—“

 _Home home home_ :

For years, something within the ‘wolf had called him West, demanding that he leave, that he return to Beacon Hills; there had been something left behind when Talia had carried them away, refusing to listen to anything different. There was a part of his soul that _yearned_ to be elsewhere, to be running through the forests that Peter had grown up in, had grown strong in, had spilled blood in.

 _Home_.

It was a pull that only he felt, and it was that pull that finally had him dropping fangs as his glacial gaze flashed at his sister. Shock flickered across Talia’s face, there and gone again in less than a heartbeat, and she _roared_ at Peter’s challenge, bloody eyes once more flaring to life in an effort to make her brother permanently submit to her rule.

 _ **Home**_.

Peter lunged at his sister, claws blurring through the air between them.

-

His mouth and hands were stained red, as crimson as the eyes of the woman who lay too-still beneath him. Copper was on his tongue, iron tang cloying in the back of his throat: and Talia’s chest did not rise or fall.

Peter shuddered, curling in on himself—

_I killed my sister._

_I killed **my sister**_.

 ** _I killed my Alpha_**.

\--and tried to ignore the burning of his now-bloody eyes as they flared in warning as the ‘wolf sensed various members of the Hale pack make their way closer to the clearing where the fight had taken place.

‘I didn’t mean to.’ was on the tip of his tongue.

‘She made me so angry.’ he thought.

‘I’m the Left Hand and she _never listened_.’ he considered explaining.

‘There’s something inside of me that keeps calling me _away_.’ he wanted to shout.

“…Mom?” Derek whispered, horror tinting his scent and turning it sour, acrid and sharp in Peter’s nose. He shuddered again and stepped back, away from the body of the woman who had been Alpha and sister and mother for too many years to count (but count them Peter could, remembered how Talia had become Alpha of their family the day after he turned twelve).

Peter glanced upwards, meeting multiple horror-stricken gazes as the rest of his family stared at Talia’s cooling body: sister, cousin, wife, mother, one-time Alpha.

( _The Queen is dead; long live the King_ a hushed whisper hissed ‘round Peter’s ears, and a shuddering sense of déjà vu crawled up his spine and lodged itself in the shadows of his heart.)

Ascension had never been a bloody affair, not with the Hale pack. The elders had always stepped aside to make way for the younger generation, teaching new Alphas everything they knew. The Alpha Spark passed from mother to daughter, father to son, always head of the family to the eldest next in line; gaining a new Alpha had always been a time of celebration for time untold with the Hales.

No one had ever before _killed_ for their crimson eyes.

 _ **I killed my sister**_.

“Get out,” Laura snarled, wolf and threat burning bright in her golden gaze. She began to shift, claws extending out from fingernail beds and fangs dropping low to be bared in the urge to _kill_ , to maim and to rend and to _end_ the pain that was howling itself free within her, at her uncle. “Get out! **Get out!** _Get out!!_ ” 

Peter left.

The pack bonds broke.

(And the Alpha ran West.)

*

“I’ve enjoyed having you in my class, Stiles. You always offer such a… _unique_ … opinion towards historical events,” Ms. Silverstein murmured softly as she leaned in over Stiles’ shoulder. He felt the curve of a breast press enticingly against his back, and the delicate scent of wisteria hovered in the heated air between them both—coaxing the amber-eyed teen closer, goaded on as the History teacher moved closer still to rest her fingertips against the steady pulse of the boy’s wrist.

“It’s almost as if you were there. Sometimes I think that maybe _you_ should be the one up there, teaching the class—and not me,” the huntress continued, hazel gaze coy as she watched Stiles from beneath the dark fan of her lashes.

He smiled, playing the fool, and offered a one-shouldered shrug. “My dad always said that I had an overactive imagination. That maybe I should think about majoring in English when I get to college—become a writer, y’know? That I should put my silver tongue to use.”

Stiles’ smile deepened, and Kate Argent’s gaze flickered down to catch sight of the pink tongue that absently wet his lower lip as he paused in thought to gather his words.

 _I hate you. You're an abomination. I’m going to enjoy ending you_ , the teen thought, dark whispers that only a soul-bonded could hear, and offered the huntress another easy smile, fox-sly eyes hidden beneath the mask he’d donned with her.

“Patience, Mischief,” the Nogitsune growled against the delicate shell of Stiles’ ear.

*

While Stiles had long ago left behind the title of _good_ son, it could still be argued that he was a _dutiful_ one.

“Good evening, Deputy Strauss!” the teen cheerfully chirped as he made his way past the check-in desk at the front of the Sheriff’s Department. “I noticed that my dad forgot to grab his dinner this morning—which is a _travesty_ , I tell you; this kale is nothing but top-notch for the hard-working Sheriff of this fine county—and so I decided to swing by to make sure he actually got the chance to eat it before heading out with some of the junior deputies to have dinner down at the diner.”

“I’m sure that your dad will be sure to thank you for the thoughtfulness of your action,” Deputy Strauss shot back, smile darkening into an amused smirk. He leaned forward to settle his weight on his forearms, shifting just enough to the side to watch as Stiles made his way towards the back where his dad had his office; it didn’t happen often, the Sheriff deliberately trying to forget the meals that Stiles made for him, but it happened regularly enough that the rest of the deputies on duty paused in their workload, as well: who wouldn’t say no to a free show, after all?

“Hey, Daddy-o! Look at what I saw you forgot on the kitchen counter this morning!” 

Soon enough, the Sheriff’s commentary came chiming in, accompanied with the crinkling of the paper lunch bag as he inspected what, exactly, his son had brought to him:

“Oh, come on. Stiles, really? _Kale_? I’m a grown man, not a rabbit.”

“True enough, which is why I packed in plenty of other, _healthy_ proteins and fiber for you. Doctor Singh did get on you about your blood pressure and cholesterol last visit and…”

Stiles’ voice faded away as the office door shut behind him, and Deputy Strauss’ shoulders shook as he smothered his laughter: Noah Stilinski truly should have known better by now, that there was no point in fighting against his son when Stiles was on a mission (and keeping his father as healthy as possible was certainly his most prioritized crusade and one that the Sheriff should just give up on winning sooner rather than later).

-

Something—some _one_ —called to the honey-eyed teen, had been since the day before. And though he genuinely _had_ wanted to stop by to drop off his dad’s dinner… the niggling feeling of _Look! Look! Look here!_ had been just as strong of a reason to make a visit to the Sheriff’s Department. It was that unrelenting feeling to just _stop_ and to _look_ that had Stiles slipping away from his father’s office once he was sure that the older man was actually eating (instead of just promising to “eat it later, when he had more time”), had him venturing off towards the prison cells that were normally behind lock and key.

Very few things stayed locked at Stiles’ touch these days, though.

So the dark-haired boy made his way on silent feet down the hallway that had cells on either side of the walkway, following the insistent _tug_ that had gotten stronger the moment he’d stepped into the department: not knowing what he’d find at the end of the tether, but cautiously curious all the same.

He eventually stilled before the cell at the very end of the hallway, not able to go any farther—but there was no need to do so, anyway. The tugging had stopped; he was at journey's end.

Stiles tilted his head to the side as he inspected the scruffy man; the other was barely conscious, hair overgrown and clothes dirty and torn. He looked like many of the men and women that the teen’s dad oftentimes picked up on drunk and disorderly charges, homeless and on the streets, and either despairing of their situation or resigned to it and hoping to have at least one night of guaranteed at the Sheriff's department, and yet…

_”You must be Stiles.”_

And yet.

Not quite always, not in _this_ particular situation.

The amber-eyed boy caught his lower lip between his teeth, gnawing on it thoughtfully as he considered the ‘wolf that he hadn’t seen in years, not since Talia had gathered together the Hale pack and left in what might as well have been the middle of the night considering the fact that it’d happened so quickly. Even years later, the family’s leaving was still a choice topic for gossipmongers.

Stiles’ shoe scuffed against the concrete at his feet, sound rough and almost echoing in the silence that had descended—

And Peter’s eyes slowly opened, blue eyes flaring heart’s blood red, and the older man’s nostrils flared in sudden hunger as the Alpha’s attention shifted to settle his gaze upon the teen on the opposite side of the bars. There was the barest hint of sanity that still remained in the other’s eyes (thought but never spoken, and Stiles couldn’t help but wonder, _Where is your pack now, Peter Hale?_ ), and he focused his attention upon the boy with a predatory sort of intent that threw back to the stories of the Big Bad Wolf that roamed the woods for unsuspecting travelers.

“Hello, Peter,” Stiles murmured and never once looked away from that crimson gaze, meeting it without flinching with his own fox-bright eyes.

“It was you. You’re the one that the rumors have been about,” the ‘wolf husked out in a gravelly voice, words barely understandable—obvious, too, to the teen that it had been quite some time since Peter had actually _spoken_ to another person.

“Maybe. Maybe not,” came the answer, a curious head-tilt paired with the vague reply. “Who knows? Does it matter, though?”

The ‘wolf’s nostrils flared once more as Peter took a deep breath, drawing in the teen’s scent even as the red slowly began to fade from his eyes to leave behind glacial blue—and a tentative, fragile sort of clarity. “No,” Peter murmured and eased off of the cell’s cot to make his way closer towards the bars that separated him and the teen that reeked of the sharp tang of ozone and the musk of fox. “No, it doesn’t.”

A claw tipped hand eased between the bars, reaching out to lightly cup over the apple of Stiles’ cheek. The boy quirked a small smile at the touch, though the brightening of amber eyes gave away the effect that the touch had upon him: still, Stiles allowed it to linger for a moment, for two, then stepped backwards and towards the hallway’s exit.

“Welcome back to Beacon Hills, Peter Hale.”

_Welcome home._

-

His bedroom window was open.

Stiles paused at the doorway, staring at the open window with narrowed eyes: he made it a habit never to leave the window open and, besides, the wards that covered the entirety of the house should have given the teen warning that someone was intending to break in-- _had managed_ to break in.

"Kuugeki...?" Stiles called out quietly, wanting to know that the Nogitsune was at his back before he proceeded further. Fur brushed against the nape of his neck, reassuring and familiar, and the bit of tension that the teen carried along the line of his shoulders released and allowed his spine to relax. Worse came to worse, at least Stiles was no longer alone.

Cautious now of what he might find, Stiles carefully made his way deeper into the bedroom; all of his senses were ramped up as high as they would go, instincts thrumming and razor-edged sharp just beneath the mask his person-suit provided to the world at large. As the fox-child stepped closer to the window, Stiles finally saw that one of the runes he'd carved into the windowsill had carefully been scratched out (by the tip of a _claw_ , if Stiles had to guess), work delicate and the person behind the surprise visit obviously knowledgable enough with magic.

Laying innocently in the middle of Stiles' pillow was a bouquet of wolfsbane and foxglove.

\--and though the gesture could be seen as a threat, Stiles remembered how often Peter used to come across him as he wandered the Preserve, aconite blossom spinning absently between his fingers despite the fact it was poisonous to humans and deadly to werewolves. Remembered, too, how often Peter's gaze had sharpened with curiosity as the 'wolf watched Stiles, how the curiosity had evolved to interest each time they spoke.

Eyes going half-mast to hide his amusement, the teen plucked a blossom of each from their respective stems and tucked the wolfsbane and foxglove flowers behind an ear.

 _Such an **intriguing** first courting gift he's given you, Mischief_, the Nogitsune chortled from the shadows within his mind, and Stiles hummed idly in response, not willing to completely agree--or disagree.

*

There was one particular spot in Bean Me Up, Biscotti that Stiles had claimed for his own—up to and including the fact that regulars now instinctively avoided it, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before the teen could be found curled up in the oversized armchair with sneakered feet tucked absently beneath the still-coltish length of his legs.

“I have no idea how you can actually _taste_ the coffee considering how much sugar and milk is dumped in this.”

The quiet _click_ of a mug being set on the wooden top of the small tablestand was enough to shift Stiles’ attention away from the book he’d been absently paging through—obviously old and obviously rare, and the teen curled his fingers possessively over the binding when he caught sight of Peter’s sudden spike of interest. Tucking the book away—though already fully aware that _out of sight_ was **not** _out of mind_ for the Alpha werewolf—Stiles reached out to take a small sip of the drink being offered to him.

He hummed quietly in pleasure: _perfect_.

“I should probably be concerned over the fact that you already know what my favorite drink here is….”

Peter lifted an inquiring eyebrow as the teen trailed and then mockingly prompted: “But?”

“… _but_ ,” Stiles continued while offering the older man a toothy smile, “free coffee. Better not to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

The reply was enough to coax an eyeroll from the ‘wolf, and he settled down on the arm of Stiles’ chair, legs crossed and a casual arm thrown over the top—just barely close enough to brush against the back of the teen’s head, fingertips touching lightly against the nape of the boy’s neck each time Stiles moved to resettle himself. “Ah, well. I’d hate to _disappoint_ ,” Peter snarked back in response and allowed his eyes to go heavy-lidded for a moment as _power_ and _forest_ drifted closer as Stiles tilted his head upwards to meet the older man’s gaze with his own amused one. “Anything else you’d want since we’re talking about gift horses?”

Stiles lightly tapped on his chin for a quick moment before a sly smile curled his lips upwards, expression turning sharp and fox-like as he watched the other from beneath the heavy fan of his lashes. “Two slices of their allspice pumpkin cheesecake. If you’re offering.”

Amusement taking precedence over irritation at the boy’s response, Peter huffed a breath and started to slide off of the armchair to make his way back towards the counter and the waiting barista. Before he could go very far, however, Stiles caught the ‘wolf’s wrist in one hand and brushed the pad of his thumb lightly over Peter’s pulse.

He stilled almost instantly and stared down at the teen while crimson slowly began to bleed into his gaze.

“I’m glad that you’re looking better already,” Stiles murmured, voice low, and continued to watch the other from beneath his lashes. Smile deepening as an edge of danger, of mischief, seeped into the curl of his lips, the amber-eyed boy finally released his hold on the elder and gestured towards the back of the café. “ _Cheesecake_ , Peter.”

The ‘wolf’s eyes flashed warningly—but Peter headed to retrieve Stiles’ treat all the same, designer jacket flaring about his body in a gesture that would have perhaps done Professor Snape proud. Gone was the unkempt hair and skin, thrown away were the torn and dirty clothing: this was a Peter Hale that was a throwback to when he was last living here in Beacon Hills. Handsome and as tempting as a devil’s promise, and as treacherous as one, too. 

A wet nose pressed against the curve of the teen’s throat, and a familiar—beloved—chittering laugh echoed tellingly in Stiles’ mind. The Nogitsune settled itself in Peter’s abandoned seat and curled its nine tails around the bulk of its boy’s body, weight nothing more than moondust at midnight. “You’re playing a dangerous game, Mischief,” the dark kitsune warned; however, amusement laced its voice and gave lie to the caution it attempted to preach to its young charge.

“Those are the best kinds, though, Kuugeki.”

*

“I see that you haven’t strayed from the habit of wandering the Preserve.”

Stiles tilted his head upwards, closing his eyes to feel the gentle touch of sunlight through the trees’ canopy. “No, I haven’t,” the teen answered before blinking eyes open to turn his attention to the partially shifted ‘wolf to the right of the path. “Can’t make any claims against trespassing, though. _Everything the light touches is my kingdom_ , even.”

Bought and paid for, through magic and blood—and quitclaim deeds, too, though Talia hadn’t down that last part when she accepted the money for her pack’s old lands. The entirety of the Preserve belonged to Stiles, and he had no intention of ever letting it go, not when the pulse of the land followed every beat of his heart, when he knew every inch of the forest for miles on end, when it was his oversight that had finally coaxed families back into roaming the established trails—had kept the more _deviant_ supernaturals of Beacon Hills in line, too.

“And, thus, Long Live the King,” the Nogitsune chortled to itself as it stepped out from the shadows to circle ‘round the teen. Peter’s interest sharpened as he looked over at the fox’s shade that sat ever-so tamely at Stiles’ feet, and a quicksilver gaze met crimson before the kitsune offered the mortal a toothy, mocking grin.

*

“He has the makings of an Emissary,” Peter mused quietly as the Nogitsune padded on silent feet through his living room, exploring with typical fox-like curiosity each nook and cranny and the items that the Alpha had already placed in their cubbyholes.

“ _Had_ ,” the dark kitsune corrected with a chuffed laugh and offered the ‘wolf the same toothy, mocking grin it had days ago. “Had, but no longer.”

 _Tap tap tap tap_ : the steady sound of Peter’s claws clacking away on the side table had the Nogitsune glancing sidelong at the ‘wolf, huffing quietly in its own dark amusement before looking away to continue its explorations.

“The boy is a Spark, Peter Hale,” the kitsune continued as the silence dragged on between them, only Peter’s irritated _tapping_ breaking the tension that had suddenly spiked between the two. “Untrained and unsupervised before he came to me. Overlooked by the other magic workers in this territory. With his particular heritage, he would have been the perfect _Vargr-Seiðmaðr_ , your pack’s wolf-witch once the vet finally retired. But he found me and bound us and my Mischief will be something even greater now. _Wolves_ no longer lay claim to his soul, his magic. He's more.”

“And what would that be?” Peter asked as the silence dragged on a bit longer, letting his tone go snide and abrupt at the smug superiority in the kitsune’s.

“My own--my self,” Stiles interrupted them both, stepping out of a shadow to lean over Peter’s shoulder to brush a cheek against the fox’s—ignoring, too, the way that the ‘wolf’s eyes went half-lidded as he reached out to wrap a possessive hand around the delicate curve of Stiles’ wrist.

*

The scent of the library was both a familiar and comforting one to Stiles and Peter. Biblichor was something that had long ago become a comfort to 'wolf and teen, both squirreled away to research, to learn, to hoard knowledge for themselves--nuggets of fact and fiction that was as greedily guarded from others as a dragon did with its own nest, possessively guarded and only shown under grudging, much-protested circumstances. 

("I love the smell of old books," Stiles had murmured during one visit to the library, shadows twining around his lower legs in the familiar form of the Nogitsune. "Did you know that it's actually called biblichor--from the Greek word, _Biblos_ , meaning book and Ichor, meaning _the fluid that flows in the veins of Gods_. It's supposedly inspired from the word Petrichor, but I like it because I like the idea that all knowledge that's written down is supposedly from a divine _spark_.")

This particular visit was for Peter's sake, though Stiles had decided to tag along because he'd never before turned down a visit to Beacon Hills' library--or any library, for that matter, though his favorite had most recently become Al-Qarawiyyin Library in Morocco. The teen sat perched on the top of one of the many reading tables scattered amongst the stacks, swinging his legs childishly back and forth, and Stiles watched as Peter prowled up and down the various aisles as he attempted to hunt down a piece of information that he was currently missing and that hadn't been found in what was left of the Hale Vault in Beacon Hills.

While the library was nowhere near as extensive as the Hales' own personal one, that was something that Peter no longer had access to--and generations of Hales had learned the lesson of hiding things in plain sight and had scattered more useful, more esoteric, books throughout the bulk of what was accessible to the community at large. Chameleons shifting their skins to blend in, though Stiles suspected that Peter wouldn't be finding the information he searched for.

As the teen waited for Peter to finally come to that realization, Stiles watched as one of the wendigo town residents idly made her way down one of the library aisles; body language casual and seemingly moving through the building in an almost aimless manner, the amber-eyed boy could still see the way that she never moved far from a little boy in particular--noticed, too, how her eyes would linger and how hunger would bring tension lines around her eyes and mouth.

She was hunting the child.

Stiles shifted forward at the edge of the table, and on the next upswing of his leg, the heel of his shoe connected with the bottom of the reading table with a resounding _Bang!_ , loud enough to double as a gunshot to echo through the hushed quiet of the library. The wendigo froze at the sound, attention redirected to where Stiles sat--as comfortable as a king upon a throne--and the teen offered the pseudo-woman a sharp-edged smile in warning.

Her eyes went wide and her face pale, and the wendigo inclined her head in respect before retreating from the library.

The fox-child glanced away--

And his tawny eyes met Peter's heart's blood-crimson.

*

Stiles' eyes were half-lidded, drowsing and daydreaming as the wind brushed over the apples of his cheeks; the passenger window of Peter's Shelby 1000 Cobra was rolled all the way down, and the teen chin rested on a forearm as he watched the scenario go by with the quiet sounds of a classic rock station playing in the background.

Forest gave way to chaparral gave way to rocky beaches and hidden tide pools and the blinding light reflected off of the vast expanse of the ocean--before shifting back to scrub brush and the towering, familiar height of redwoods and pine. This was his home, his territory, _his_ , and the fox-child's eyes eventually closed all the way as Peter brought them back over the boundary line that he'd etched in runes and sealed with his blood years ago, and Stiles smiled absently at the sense of homecoming, of welcoming.

" _No one knows what it's like / To be hated / To be fated / To telling only lies / But my dreams / They aren't as empty / As my conscience seems to be_ ," Stiles sang along under his breath to the radio, smile shifting from quietly soft, warmly content, to sharp and wicked--and the boy couldn't help the spike of amusement at the irony of the DJ's song choice.

He felt Peter's fingers curl around his free arm, hand encompassing the entirety of the teen's forearm, and it was only a moment longer before the 'wolf lifted his arm up and away: Stiles didn't soft his idle, absent singing as he felt the almost familiar brush of stubble against the thin skin of his wrist or the press of lips over his pulse point--but the teen's heart gave a telling skip all the same even while his voice remained steady.

Peter's lips curved against Stiles' skin in a predatory smile.

*

“You know,” the boy began as he leaned over Peter’s lap to steal a curly fry from the Alpha’s plate; with a hand cupped over the ‘wolf’s nape to steady himself—positioning deliberate and perhaps cruel in its placement, but it had been a _Nogitsune_ to all but raise him for a decade—his eyes were whiskey-dark as Stiles glanced sidelong to meet Peter’s gaze. “You’ve been here for a couple of months now… but you still haven’t asked if you could _stay_.”

He bit viciously into the fry, grinning sharply around the half that curled its way over his lower lip.

“Do I need to?” Peter asked with a quirked brow and plucked the half-bitten fry from the teen’s mouth to take for himself. “I was born and raised here, after all.”

“True. But the Hale pack left. This territory is _mine_ now.”

Peter’s eyes flared Alpha-red at the reminder and he swallowed a growl before it could truly form: it was true, after all—nothing Stiles had said was a lie, though the reminder still… stung. And yet, Peter was still a bastard at his very heart and couldn’t help but prod right on back: “And if I never _ask_ to stay, sweetheart?”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to see, won’t we, Alpha Hale?”

*

Stiles breathed in the scent of fire-touched leaves, the bloody sun that never set high up in the sky above the teen as he made his way through the Otherworld. The other kitsune stayed away for this trip, sensing the boy’s desire to be alone and lost in thought—lost in thought but already knowing what his eventual destination would be.

“You’re playing a dangerous game, Mischief, and it’s soon coming to an end,” the Nogitsune warned once more, stepping into existence and easily keeping up with the boy’s ground-eating pace.

He glanced sideways to meet the creature’s moonlit gaze and offered a grin that was all tooth and claw, blood and bone, and in the shadows of his eyes, the hollows of his cheekbones and curve of his throat, the fox-shade could see echoes of a woman that had once ago tempted a trickster god to bed.

“Those are still the best kind, though, Kuugeki,” the magic user answered by rote.

The Nogitsune tilted its head back and _cackled_.

*

It was a quiet sort of night; the supernatural population of Beacon Hills had kept steady the past several weeks--no fighting, no challenges, no unruly messes that Stiles had to step in to investigate and, more often than not, end up _fixing_ to ensure that his father's department still tended to overlook certain types of activity. Certain types of behavior. Certain types of people--because _monster_ was such a vague enough term and Stiles himself had seen the worst that humanity could offer while poking around in the Sheriff's case files.

Now, though:

All was quiet.

All was calm.

(For _now_.)

The teen law sprawled across the sofa in Peter's apartment, taking advantage of the calming atmosphere that had filled the older man's home as he became more and more settled in Beacon Hills. Besides that, Stiles had been with the Alpha 'wolf when Peter had gone furniture shopping, and the teen was more than happy to say that Peter's couch was a million times more comfortable than the one in his own home--well worn through years of use, springs had a nasty habit of digging into sensitive areas when a person least expected it. For leisure reading, Peter's sofa was preferred and the tawny-eyed boy took advantage of his welcome every change he could (...not that Peter was complaining, anyway).

Stiles paged absently through a leather-bound book that the Nogitsune had brought to him the night before; the text was obviously centuries old, vellum pages crumbling at the edges, and it was interesting enough that it had already held the boy's attention for hours--new magic to learn, new knowledge to unfold before his questing, voracious hunger. For this? Stiles would never be satisfied.

"You know..." Peter suddenly began, voice low as he traced over the arch of a foot that was currently planted in his lap. "I couldn't help but notice that I never see you with anyone your age. You're always either at your home, around town, in the Preserve, or here."

There was a momentary pause, and the top of the book lowered just enough for the teen to look over its edge. "...and your point, Peter?"

The Alpha 'wolf cocked his head to the side and allowed his eyes to go half-lidded and thoughtful as he watched the boy. "Where are your friends, Stiles? You're always alone, and surely you know how much more suspicious that looks to those looking from the outside in."

_Tap tap tap tap tap._

Stiles' long fingers drummed for a heartbeat--two, three, four--over the cover of the old book, expression thoughtful as he weighed his words and considered how best to answer. While the silence stretched between the both of them, going taut the longer Peter's question went unanswered, the 'wolf traced his fingers higher, lingering over the vulnerable line of the fox-child's Achilles tendon. Finally, though, the moment shattered, brittle enough to fall away into stardust as Stiles' words filled the air between them both:

"I used to have a best friend--Scott McCall. We met in kindergarten when I punched Jackson Whittemore in the face for stealing Scott's inhaler. We stayed friends while my mom got sick and even a little while after the Nogitsune showed up in my life. But it wasn't ever going to be something we could sustain, though--the friendship, I mean. Scott lived firmly under the sun, everything black and white to him; and I had already been partial to shadows and twilight, and the fox just made things even more shades of gray for me. Then, one day, his dad went too far at home, and Scott ended up in the hospital. Scott couldn't remember what happened--what his dad had done to him. But I did."

The boy's eyes went hard, something alien and ancient taking over: divine in all its fury and justice and vengeance, and Peter's fingers stilled as his heart skipped a beat in anticipation--and fear.

"I took the pound of flesh that Scott didn't know to ask for, and then he and his mom ended up moving away from Beacon Hills when Rafael _disappeared_ and never returned. After that..." A shrug. "I didn't bother trying again. Most kids would have been distraught if they'd been put in Scott's place--most kids _are_ distraught; Scott couldn't stop crying for weeks until he and Melissa finally moved--but my wires were probably crossed at birth because that's not a reaction _I_ would have ever had."

 _A reaction that you **didn't** have_, the Nogitsune whispered through the boy's mind, and Stiles remembered the little kernel of gladness, of _vindication_ , that had rocked through him when his dad had come to the school to pull him out of class. With red-rimmed eyes and the perfume of Jack Daniels already clinging to the collar of the Sheriff's uniform, Noah had stuttered out the words, _She's... she's gone, Stiles. She died._

Lightly, touch teasing enough to draw Stiles' attention to the upward journey of the 'wolf's fingers, Peter caressed over the elegant curve of the fox-child's calf until the palm of his hand cupped possessively over the thin skin of the back of the teen's knee. "I was the Hale Pack's Left Hand, you know," Peter commented idly enough while his eyes flared crimson as they met the boy's own. "I've always been partial to shades of gray."

Stiles smiled in return and dug his toes into the meat of the Alpha 'wolf's thigh.

*

 _Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;_  
_Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,_  
_The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere_  
_The ceremony of innocence is drowned;_  
_The best lack all conviction, while the worst_  
_Are full of passionate intensity._  
”The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats

*

Eventually, no matter how talented Stiles had become at juggling, things tended to fall apart—the center could never hold, not against the horde that was constantly pressing against it from the other side.

The center could not hold and things fell apart:

Kate Argent eventually realized that a Hale Alpha was back in Beacon Hills.

*

The scents of mountain ash and wolfsbane lay thick in the ransacked mess that had become Peter's apartment.

Stiles stepped across the broken line of ash, padding on silent feet through the debris that had been made of the belongings that the Alpha 'wolf had slowly been collecting over the months he'd stayed in Beacon Hills. Things he'd been able to retrieve from what was left of the Hale Vault, knick-knacks Peter had found when the two of them had gone furniture and antique shopping for things to fill the apartment with. Proof of a life that was finally being re-established, a tentative promise of a _home_ \--

And it'd all become less than trash and junk after the fight that must have raged through the various rooms.

"Well," Stiles murmured as he crouched down to finger a red hoodie that he hadn't realized he'd left behind (that Peter must have kept and hidden away because the teen hadn't ever seen it during his many visits to the werewolf's home). "That's that, I suppose."

The familiar weight of a kitsune mask settled against his temple.

*

The Nogitsune hummed idly to itself as it wrapped its lithe body around Stiles’ hips, nine tails curling and claiming around its partner’s legs. The teen absently reached down to bury his fingers in the ruff of fur that lay thick and heavy ‘round its shoulders, the gesture a familiar one—a safety blanket throughout the years between them both, though neither Stiles nor the Nogitsune ever openly acknowledged it as such.

The boy continued to stare up the overgrown driveway that led to the decrepit ruins that the Hale house had become. Despite the fact that no one had died in the fire, stories of the property being haunted had trickled through the streets of Beacon Hills for years; children would dare each other to make the trip up to the lonely house each and every Halloween, but no one had ever actually done so.

(Amongst other things, Stiles had strongly… _discouraged_ … such behavior.)

“What are you thinking of, Mischief?” Kuugeki asked as it nipped at the tips of its boy’s fingers.

“Dualism,” Stiles answered and twisted his hand so that he was instead scritching along the edge of the fox’s jawline, nimbly avoiding too-sharp teeth and instead getting a contented gargle at the touch.

It wasn’t enough to distract, not for long, and the dark fox was soon enough blinking and pulling away from Stiles’ touch; it cocked its head to the side, considering the boy’s words, and hummed in thought. “Yin and yang? How philosophical of you, Mischief.”

“Not really. It’s all about balance, in the end.”

Keeping things even, keeping the scales in check: the never-ending ouroboros, if Stiles was feeling nostalgic and wanted to tip his hat off to a long-before father and the World Snake he could potentially call kin to. Balance, too, with the Nogitsune’s own kind: from the yako to the kitsune who served Inari faithfully (knew, as well, that his own nature now aligned most strongly with _Void_ , but… everything had its own place in the grand scheme of things).

“C’mon. It’s time to go and tip the scales.”

The gravel of the property's driveway crunched softly underfoot, marking each steady step forward before the sounds began to fade away, twisting away into the twilight of the evening to leave nothing behind except for an eerie, expecting sort of silence. Entropy in motion, an end planned in meticulous detail: the wheel coming full circle.

Distantly, Stiles heard a bellow of pain--muffled, faint enough that a normal human wouldn't have caught wind of it. But Stiles was no longer completely human, hadn't been in years, and his fingertips brushed lightly over the knob at the base of the Nogitsune's skull as another agonized scream echoed up from the bowels of the Hale house ruins. The Nogitsune shivered as it soaked in both touch and scent of pain before giving in to its boy's unasked request to slip away through shadow.

 _"Happy hunting_ ," it chortled delightedly against the delicate curve of its boy's ear.

-

“Hello, Ms. Silverstein.”

Kate paused as she was about to head back down below to the tunnels that criss-crossed the entirety of the Hale property. She had spent the past several weeks exploring the various tunnels, seeing where they began and ended—mapping everything until she knew the entire system like the back of her hand and waiting, just waiting, for the rumors to finally come to fruition and her patience to bear the fruit of her reward.

(And it had. She had come to Beacon Hills expecting a different werewolf pack to raze to the ground, had perhaps expected a different sort of creature to have taken over in the Hales’ absence—had _not_ expected to catch sight of Peter Hale, estranged city son finally returning back into the hold. Hadn’t expected such a _prize_.)

The huntress’ pause was enough for Stiles to step out into view, and Kate gave a slow, sensuous smile at seeing that her unexpected visitor was also her currently favorite student. “Stiles,” she purred and stepped away from the mostly hidden doorway to the basement. “What are you doing here? The property’s not safe. You should know this; I’m sure that the Sheriff has mentioned it to you a time or two.”

“I know,” the teen replied with a funny little quirk of his lips. He glanced upwards at the unsteady wall that loomed over them both, reaching out to place the palm of his hand against the weather and fire rotted wood. “But I was waiting before letting them eventually bulldoze everything to the ground.”

“…what?” Kate asked, startled and taken aback by the unexpectedness of the comment. Instincts slowly began to prick at the skin covering her arms, warning her of a danger not yet apparent—feelings and intuition that had served her well on many a hunt and senses that she had long ago learned to listen closely to. Goosebumps marched their way along her arms, and Stiles finally looked away from the piece of the Hale house to stare at the current Argent matriarch with fox-bright eyes.

Shadows slowly eased their way from the recesses of the abandoned house, caressing their way up the boy’s body with the gentleness of a lover’s touch; shade and shadow, the depths of midnight and the witching hour come alive: they all eventually faded away to leave the teen dressed in high court clothing of an era long past in Japanese history. The Heian garments dragged heavy on Stiles’ body, silken trains falling feet behind him, though never dirtied by the soot that covered everything in thick, choking layers.

Stiles was robed in red and black and gold, mirrored in the colors of the fox mask resting jauntily against the boy’s temple.

“You should have stayed away, Kate Argent. But, then again, you couldn’t ever resist the promise of a good _hunt_ once the rumors reached you, now could you?”

The teen smiled at her, cold and cruel, and something twisted within the huntress at the knowledge she’d been so thoroughly tricked—by this _child kitsune_ —and her lips peeled away from her teeth in an ugly snarl of rage and humiliation. Kate’s hand became a flesh-toned blur as she reached for the gun hidden at the small of her back—

But Stiles was already moving.

He shed the heavier garments, puddling them at his feet like so much discarded shadow-kissed rags; dressed now in the simpler black clothing of a shinobi-no-mono, he darted in close to Kate, grasping a wrist in a hand before twisting out of her immediate reach and slamming the heel of his palm to the huntress’ elbow to break her arm and disable her aim. She screamed in surprised agony, shocked and hurting and drowning in the sensation before fury took hold and dragged her upwards to _fight_.

Kate lashed out with her unbroken arm, shifting just enough to punch Stiles in a kidney—wanting him to hurt as she was hurting, wanting him to piss blood for _weeks_ if he actually managed to come away alive from this (though she intended to have him as dead as the Alpha come dawn because her father had always said that the only good monster was a _dead one_ ). The teen grunted as her aim struck true, then darted low to slip between her parted legs to come up behind her. Stiles was fox-fast and fox-sly, using tricks and flips and spins to keep as ahead of her as possible, and it didn't take long before Kate noticed that she was _lagging_. Her hits were getting sloppier, and his own strikes that much more vicious.

Stiles grinned at her, sharp and predatory, and his eyes flared tawny in the retreating light.

"You little bastard! _Stay still!_ " the Argent matriarch snapped out as she pulled another hunting knife from one of the many hidden caches on her body. Though such a small thing, Stiles' silence unnerved her: the teen had always been such a chatterbox in her class, ready with a quip in any occasion and happy to share the randomest of facts with the class at large. He was always moving, forever jittery, never able to sit still for long--except _now_. Here, the fox-child was focused and intent, gaze forever assessing and strategizing; no move went unwasted, every strike or dodge held a purpose--and the huntress was _losing_.

She was beginning to tire, and Stiles was still as fast as he was at the start of this fight.

The teen sidestepped one of Kate's most recent strikes, bracing a hand to the ground in an effort to keep his balance--but, as with every economical move made, he doubled it into something else, as well: Stiles used the momentum of the new position to lash a foot out towards one of Kate's kneecaps. The kick struck true, and the _crunch_ of breaking bone was soon enough paired with her cry of agony. The boy continued with the motion by knocking the huntress' legs out from under her before rolling so that he came out on top of her, straddling Kate's prostate, broken form.

 _Too fast. He’s too fucking fast; I can't keep up; I'm **dead**_ , Kate screamed at herself, eyes going wide in horrified disbelief at her vulnerable position—she had been a hunter for _years_ , how was one measly boy actually managing to beat her?!—before the huntress screamed in fury and denial of the end that she could see creeping ever-closer, inevitable and as maddening as the steady ticking of a clock, and she grasped at her thigh holster with her good hand, groping for the wickedly sharp knife that had been a gift from Gerard on her sixteenth birthday and the last weapon she still had on her person.

For that, Stiles broke her second arm, then lashed out with a palm strike hard to the middle of her chest: shattering Kate’s ribcage with an almost clinical precision and forcing the bone shards inwards to puncture her lungs as everything collapsed from the force of his blow.

As she began wheezing for breath, fluid almost immediately beginning to fill her lungs, the teen finally stood up and moved away from her prone body.

She laughed at the blank expression on his face, even now still attempting to roll over to spit a mouthful of blood in his direction. “Gonna go chickenshit on me now, Stiles? Can’t finish me off—just let me drown in my own blood, huh?”

He smiled at her, expression as predatory and hungry as it had been through the duration of their fight, and finally tugged the fox mask down to hide his face away, though the gold of his eyes still shone through the mask’s eyeslits.

“No, Kate,” Stiles corrected, and she shuddered at the coldness of his tone. “I’m going to bring the house down around you, the way that you originally intended to do with the Hales. You’ll die from your injuries, screaming for help but not getting found for days even as the pressure from the rubble crushes you beneath its weight. You'll be buried alive and surrounded by reminders of your greatest failure. No shifted super to touch and accidentally change you so you can survive another day, no new _animal attacks_ to raise suspicion from local law enforcement and gain the Council’s attention. Just an _unfortunate accident_ with you at the heart of it all. You’d almost think that this house was _cursed_.”

Kate’s eyes went wide as the foundations of the house began to tremble around her, dirt and debris already pattering to the ground: walls swaying and doorways finally collapsing beneath the weight of their loads, the huntress screamed in terror as she was eventually buried alive--as Stiles had promised she would be.

*

Stiles stepped into the Otherworld and left behind the sounds of wood and concrete shattering, collapsing on itself—ruins becoming nothing more than rubble, a tomb for a hunter that had never been able to follow her Council’s Code—and brushed past chittering, excited kitsune; the many tailed foxes rolled and bounded about his legs, constantly underfoot and demanding attention even as the teen made his way deeper into the starkly colored world to finally stop before a monstrous wolf resting beneath the black branches of an oak tree.

“Hello, Peter,” Stiles murmured and carefully cupped the huge muzzle between his hands.

The wolf stirred, multiple eyes blinking open—each one as red as the blood that coated the boy’s hands—and it took only a moment before the cottony sensation of unconsciousness fled, and the Alpha's attention shifted to the teen crouched before him. Peter gave a rumbling sound that was neither purr nor growl, but something between the two, and moved closer to rest his gargantuan muzzle over the slope of Stiles’ shoulder. The cloaked teen chuckled at the gesture and carefully ran his hands over the older man’s snout, wary of the wounds that he knew lay hidden beneath the other’s dark fur. Kate had been thorough, after all.

“Come on, it’s time to go back home,” the teen eventually continued after a long moment where fox-child and wolf-man just took in the other’s presence. The rumbling shifted then to something very much like a growl, unhappy and clear enough in expressing it, and Stiles just huffed a quiet laugh before reaching up to idly tweak one tufted ear. “Knock it off.”

The gesture was enough to pause Peter’s slow-burning ire, and the wolf shifted back to take in Stiles’ expression, the look in his eyes: seeing the elaborate Heian clothing beneath the nine-tailed cloak, the copper-tang of blood and the dreaded sootiness of mountain ash thick upon the air, and the half-lidded _Look_ that the teen gave to him in answer for the sudden aggression, Peter’s lips finally curved into a hungry, toothy grin-- 

Maw dropping wide to swallow the world whole.

*  
*  
*

Once upon a time ago, a new mother began to whisper rules of magic to her young son:

“The world is a dark place, _moje kochanie_ ; it is one filled with monsters, always ready to gobble you whole. Be wary of the promises they give: seal every vow with blood and bone and **_Name_**. A True Name, one that will bind them to their word.”

“But how will I know that they’re telling the truth, Matka? Couldn’t they lie…?”

“You’ll know, _mały płomień_.”

*  
*  
*

Peter’s lips brushed against the vulnerable line of Stiles’ collarbone, teeth scraping teasingly against the pale skin: marking and claiming, leaving behind bruises that the ‘wolf already knew would be faded by morning’s light.

“Let me stay,” he whispered against the teen’s damp skin, catching the tantalizing bob of Stiles’ Adam’s apple between his teeth. Peter closed crimson eyes and tightened the hold he had around the boy’s hips, drawing him closer still against the unyielding press of the Alpha’s chest. Possessive and begging in turn, following the draw that had called to him for _years_ and had coaxed him back to this place even while he'd been mostly-feral and running on instincts alone. “Let me stay, sweetheart.”

“Make a promise in blood and bone and Name, and I’ll say yes,” Stiles purred against the shell of the ‘wolf’s ear, arching to press impossibly closer: tantalizing and promising with every touch, every press of his lips against the silk of Peter’s skin. There was a devil's bargain in his eyes, in the knowing curve of his lips, slant of his fox-sly eyes; but this trickster spirit, this fox-child had been something that Peter had been missing within himself for _years_ , and there was no other answer but this:

The ‘wolf shuddered and opened his mouth—

*

_I promise._

_I promise._

**_I promise…_ **

***

::end.::

*

 _Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presences, means accepting the risk of absence._  
**The Little Prince** by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

**Author's Note:**

>  **Quotes:**  
>  _”Let’s be perfectly clear, shall we. The fox is not a little orange puppy dog with doe eyes and a waggly tail. It’s a disease-ridden wolf with the morals of a psychopath and the teeth of a great white shark.”_ \- Jeremy Clarkson
> 
>  _”A fox is a wolf who sends flowers.”_ \- Ruth Brown
> 
> (The above quotes are references to the title.)
> 
>  _“You know when you're drowning, you don't actually inhale until right before you black out. It's called voluntary apnea. It's like no matter how much you're freaking out, the instinct to not let any water in is so strong that you won't open your mouth until you feel like your head's exploding.”_ \- **Teen Wolf** ; 02x11 – Battlefield
> 
> “ _You're looking for help from God you say he couldn't be found / Looking up to the sky and searchin' beneath the ground / Like a King without his Crown…_ ” – “King Without A Crown” by Matisyahu
> 
>  _Everything the light touches is [our] kingdom._ \- The Lion King
> 
> " _No one knows what it's like / To be hated / To be fated / To telling only lies / But my dreams / They aren't as empty / As my conscience seems to be_." - "Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who
> 
>  _Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;_  
>      _Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,_  
>      _The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere_  
>      _The ceremony of innocence is drowned;_  
>      _The best lack all conviction, while the worst_  
>      _Are full of passionate intensity._  
>  Taken from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats. 
> 
> The full poem is:
> 
> Turning and turning in the widening gyre  
>     The falcon cannot hear the falconer;  
>     Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;  
>     Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,  
>     The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere  
>     The ceremony of innocence is drowned;  
>     The best lack all conviction, while the worst  
>     Are full of passionate intensity.  
>     Surely some revelation is at hand;  
>     Surely the Second Coming is at hand.  
>     The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out  
>     When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi  
>     Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;  
>     A shape with lion body and the head of a man,  
>     A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,  
>     Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it  
>     Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.  
>     The darkness drops again but now I know  
>     That twenty centuries of stony sleep  
>     Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,  
>     And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,  
>     Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
> 
> ***
> 
> And, once again, all artwork is credited to my super sweet, absolutely _amazing_ , and super talented artist: Colette! She can be found [on Tumblr](https://nutterfox.tumblr.com/) and [on ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpiritOfFox/pseuds/SpiritOfFox). Please be sure to send her lots and lots of love for her gorgeous pieces of art! :) <3
> 
> https://nutterfox.tumblr.com/post/185628796328/art-submission-masterpost-for-toothed-morality


End file.
